What is an empty engineering role costing you?

See how an unfilled role could affect your team, your project timeline and your costs. Add your open roles and we will estimate the impact in a few seconds.

Takes 2 MinutesRuns in your browserNothing is uploaded
01

Which roles are currently open?

Add the engineering roles you are trying to fill. Add all of them, not just the urgent one - two open roles cost more than twice as much as one, because the same team covers both.

What role is open?

How many people do you need?

How many days has the role been vacant?

Approximate yearly cost for one employee.

Annual employee cost means salary plus everything else one person costs you - employer contributions, laptop, software licences, desk space. If you change the currency at the top we fill in typical local figures, so type your own over them.

02

What is your team working towards?

This is where an open role in medical devices is different from any other industry. You save one salary - but you can lose a date, and the date is usually worth far more than the salary.

Approval you need before you can sell in the United States.

This covers an FDA 510(k) clearance. If a stretched team puts the file together, the FDA is more likely to come back with an Additional Information request. That stops your review clock for around 60 days, but not your competitors'.

Select your target date.

Approximate annual sales linked to this product. Not sure? Enter 0.

How many engineers are in the team? This tells us how much spare time they have to catch up.

How many quality issues are already overdue? These are the first thing an auditor asks to see.

How many days until your next audit? No audit planned? Enter 0.

Ready? Generate your full impact report.

We will estimate what the open roles are costing you, model how your target date could move, run 1,200 hiring scenarios to show the range of outcomes, and write a short summary you can put in front of your board.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and nobody is emailed unless you ask at the end.

ESTIMATED COST SO FAR

$75.3k

after taking off $14.5k of salary

COST OF EACH EXTRA DAY

$720

$5.0k a week

POSSIBLE PROJECT DELAY

96 days

up to 122 days if hiring runs long

OVERALL IMPACT

MEDIUM

40 / 100

03

Could your deadline move?

Based on your open roles, here is the estimated impact on your target date.

FDA submission

RUNNING LATE

Where this date is likely to land once the missing work is caught up. The shaded area shows the range of outcomes, from a fast hire to a slow one.

YOUR TARGET DATE
Not set
90 days away
LIKELY COMPLETION
Feb 9, 2027
based on open roles
POSSIBLE DELAY
96 days
later than planned
IF HIRING TAKES LONGER
Mar 7, 2027
122 days late
04

How much work could be affected?

Calendar days turned into real working days of engineering, and the workload that lands on everybody else.

ENGINEERING TIME LOST

124 days

Working days of engineering already missed while the roles were open.

WORK STILL WAITING

172 days

More working days lost before a new hire is fully up to speed.

EXTRA TEAM WORKLOAD

942 hrs

Extra hours your existing team has taken on to cover the gap.

ESTIMATED BACKLOG

163 days

Work nobody has picked up, waiting to be cleared.

05

Where is the money going?

Every cost, line by line. The salary you are not paying is taken off, so this is a fair total and not a scary one.

Lost engineering capacity

Days of work lost × what a day costs you + 3

$105.6K

Overtime

35% of the missing work, paid at 1.25x

$15.4K

Hiring cost

16% of one year's employee cost

$9.7K

Estimated total impact

$233.1K
09

What should you do?

One recommendation based on your numbers.

RECOMMENDED

Add temporary capacity now.

$720
est. cost for every day open
45 days
less delay than waiting
$44.2k
saved over six months

Your open roles are estimated to cost $720 per day and could delay your milestone by about 96 days. Adding an experienced engineer now can help clear the backlog while you continue hiring permanently. Two weeks on your own work costs about $3.8K, and you judge the result against a list you write before it starts.

A paragraph you can send to your boss

"We have 1 engineering roles open, the longest for 0 days. That has already cost us about $75,316 in work not done, overtime and management time - after taking off the salary we did not pay. It is costing another $720 a day. With the team we have, our date of N/A is likely to become Feb 9, 2027 - about 96 days late. I suggest a two-week trial on our own backlog, judged against a list we agree before it starts, costing about $3,850, with nobody added to headcount."

10

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